In the Land of My Birth

The light and water that make up my soul reflect the image of this place…

I’m home tonight, in the land of my birth. As I step out of the odd round building I am staying in this evening and look a short distance away, I can just make out the lights of the place where I knelt and swore my life to my goddess. The place where I was given my Name. Just outside these poorly insulated walls, the winter wind from whence I got that name whistles through the first woods I called my own. This is not where I first encountered power and spirit, but it is where I learned control and took my first faltering steps towards becoming who I am today.

Echos and memories greet me everywhere I turn. There I drilled with wooden practice swords, overcoming a lifetime of ingrained belief that I was clumsy and uncoordinated. Down that path is the place where I first held a regular full-moon circle. This place is where I learned to shield, and that where I first heard of “pattern magic.” My whole apprenticeship and the first years of my journeyman period took place in these scant four hundred acres.

But I am not solely the sum of my magic and spirituality. In that building yonder I trained in the ways of design and seeing things not as they are, but as they could be. And in a building identical to the one I am in now, I experience the challenges and joys of living with friends and family and of having to cook your my meals and clean my own space. And back that way again is the place I feel in love, and learned the lessons of love and loss, of passion and dedication.

I am in the place of my birth and I feel the spirits of this land reaching for me, hear reports whispered in my ears by faithful spirits who’ve long waited for someone they can tell of the passage of time and the goings on of territory once claimed by my Clan. Power sings in my veins with the unbridled freedom of old familiarity as I feel myself connected to this place with an ease that boarders on the involuntary.

It is the nature of the Vreschtik that we leave a connection to everyplace we have held. Every land where we once built a vrescht will still answer to our call. But the way we do that is by leaving a bit of ourselves behind each and every time we move on. And we were young and new to our power when this land was ours. With the passion and temerity of youth, we poured ourselves into this place, which in return made us over into what the Land and the gods wanted us to be. I am a child of woman, god, and earth. My mother, my Lady, and this place each share stake in my being.

This place the still sings to my heart and tells me that I’m home. But alas I am not. This is not a place for men like me. Here I am old, even as land and memory sing sweet, seductive songs of my youth in my ear. This is a place for the young, for those whose path is to find themselves and their place in the world and while I can sojourn here for a brief time, I must always leave it to them. This place is as lost to me as my mother’s womb.

About Wintersong

I am a presenter, shaman, sex & kink educator, activist, and photographer, with over a decade of experience running rituals and teaching classes that range from private one-on-one instruction, to workshops at conferences and events accross the United States.

Some of the topics I present on include kink/BDSM techniques, alternative spirituality, magic, queer/LGBT issues, and polyamory. Today my appearance credits include kink, pagan, and LGBTQ conferenes; universities; hospitals; and online video programs; as well as television documentaries on topics such as polyamory, pagan spirituality and genital integrity.

Aside from presenting, I am the former assistant producer for Dark Odyssey Events, and a regular blogger for LGBT politics and culture blog The Bilerico Project. My writing also has been in HUGGIN Magazine, Pittsburgh's Out, New Witch Magazine, and books by leaders of the pagan & neo-classical shamanism communities.

My shamanic ritual work is centered around rites of personal transformation as well as the relationship between the living and the honored dead. I am a founder and council member of Clan Tashlin, a magical order built around a unique approach to magic and the relationship between people and the land.